Tomorrows' World axed

Tomorrows' World programmes form perhaps the most vivid TV-related memories I have from my childhood. The BBC's science and technology institution provided me with first sightings of floppy disks (the presenter flexed them to show how very floppy they were) or Compact Disks (they covered them in jam and trampled them underfoot to show how they were... umm... indestructible) while I was growing up in the (then) apparently technology-free west of Scotland. Back in the 1980s, when Judith Hann was presenting, I was one of ten million viewers who tuned in (helpfully, it was also scheduled next to pop institution Top of the Pops, as I recall). But it probably says something that my memories are all from then: I can't remember the last time I watched, and the BBC reports today that the programme has been cancelled, after the audience slumped to three million for the last series. The "brand", 40 years old, will live on, but the studio-based show that gave us the first glimpse of stuff we now take for granted is no more.